There’s something about unnecessary meetings that can turn a group of intelligent, kind, charismatic people into one collective brainless, mean, boring monster. Meetings are the same way-there are other things you can do instead. Here are some types of meetings you should avoid.
Daily Standups or Status Updates
Replacing daily standups with a bot
- The bot asks all the questions that come up during meetings and compiles them into a report
- Posts everything in a public channel so everyone is kept up with what is being worked on
- Easier than a meeting
Brainstorming from scratch
Hannah Herman, a copywriter at Zapier, told me people should come to brainstorming sessions prepared
Have a regular meeting?
Try making it less frequent.
- Meetings aren’t bad, and there are ways to make them better. But they’re easy to overuse-and that’s not free.
- A fifteen-minute meeting with 10 people is two-and-a-half hours of overall time. What could your team do with that time?
Anything without an agenda
Meetings should be an exception, not the rule. If you can’t explain why you’re having a meeting, you shouldn’t have one.
- Agendas are your chance to do that. Automate the agenda-making process with Zapier
Anything with too many people
Meetings don’t scale well. Five people can have a productive conversation; 300 people cannot.
- Where’s the line?
- Jeff Bezos uses a two-pizza rule to decide. He won’t attend a meeting unless two pizzas could feed the whole group.
